Bilawal Bhutto’s India trip takes glare off Shehbaz Sharif’s London ‘mission’

Islamabad: Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan Bilawal Bhutto Zardari’s trip to India to attend a secret meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)SCOIn Goa, the visit of Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to London on the occasion of the coronation of King Charles III was overshadowed in optics, which suited the government at this time. Shahbaz, who suffers from political and constitutional challenges, is expected to meet his exiled brother and former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of his coronation ceremony on Saturday to seek his advice on handling the crisis at home.
The Prime Minister was observing Bilawal’s visit from London, indicating the importance his government attached to that trip. And, most importantly, he will be relieved that the foreign minister who has arrived in India has shadowed him while he is doing what may be most important in the British capital. Based on the advice he got from Nawaz, the three-time chief minister, the younger Sharif is expected to make crucial decisions about his return to the country to escape possible scorn for defying Supreme Court orders to hold elections in Punjab province on May 14. .

With his Foreign Secretary’s visit commanding all the attention on mainstream and digital media at the moment, the Prime Minister has done his homework to keep the focus there. “Pakistan’s decision to attend the SCO meeting reflects the country’s commitment to the organization’s charter and multilateralism,” Shahbaz wrote on Twitter on Thursday.

“We are committed to doing our part to advance our shared values ​​of peace and stability in the region. We are all for win-win understandings based on interdependence, trade and mutually beneficial cooperation,” he wrote.

Bilawal’s trip, the first by a Pakistani foreign minister to India since Hina Rabbani Khar’s visit in July 2011, has split the ranks of the opposition Justice and Reconciliation Movement.
Shah Mehmood Qureshi, Bilawal’s predecessor, said the SCO was an “important forum” that Pakistan should benefit from, taking a stand at odds with that of some prominent colleagues in the party.
“In my view, there is no harm,” he said of the visit. “If we want Eurasian integration politically, economically and in security, this is the forum.” But Shireen Mazari of PTI made a contradictory note, saying that the country’s “imported” foreign minister was in Goa “to show his loyalty to the Bajwa plan (referring to former army chief General Bajwa) to appease the US over Israel and India”. “Although it was insulting that India refused to arrange bilateral meetings, he was desperate to go,” she said.